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The London Lightning are finally going to have something new to work on this week . . . coming back from a loss.

For the first time this year, after setting a National Basketball League of Canada record for most wins in a row at 11, the Lightning wound up on the short end of a 105-101 score to the Oshawa Power Saturday at Budweiser Gardens.

The bottom line was as simple as the final score: The Lightning were outplayed by the Power and didn’t deserve to win.

“They outworked us because in our minds, this was going to be easy,” said Lightning head coach Micheal Ray Richardson said. “We weren’t mentally ready. Those guys came in and they played hard and they played well. I take my hat off to them, they played great. We made some stupid mistakes.”

The Lightning did all of that and more. Their biggest problem was the same problem they had much of last year: They had trouble defending a super-quick, hot-shooting guard.

Now to be fair to the Lightning, the way Nick Okorie was shooting the ball, it would have been hard to find anyone who was good enough to guard him on Saturday. He went for 38 and whenever the Power needed a big basket, he got it for them.

“I just took what they gave me,” Okorie said. “If they gave me a couple of steps, I took the shot. If they came up on me, I went to the basket. After the first half, I felt pretty good.”

He did a lot of damage in the second quarter. It was the worst quarter of basketball the Lightning have played all year, and maybe in the two years of their existence. The Power outscored the Lightning second unit 32-13.

That’s where the Lightning have had a huge advantage this year. When Richardson goes to his bench, they usually wind up outplaying the opposition. “It was horrendous,” Richardson said of the quarter. “We got nothing from the second unit, nothing. I left them out there hoping they could get something going, but they didn’t.”

The Lightning were down by 12 at the half, but still managed to work their way back — thanks in large part to Elvin Mims and Tim Ellis — and took a six-point lead in the fourth quarter.

But they couldn’t get the big stop or the big shot when they needed it.

If the Lightning had managed to win this one, it would have been a steal they didn’t deserve.

The Lightning got 21 points and 13 rebounds from Mims, 18 and 9 from Morgan Lewis and 17 and nine from Ellis.

Bo Harris added 17 for the Power with Jusay Rockett having a 16 point, 16 rebound night.

The Lightning are entering a big week for them. It will be interesting to see how they react to a loss not many expected them to take. They play three games this week, Thursday and Saturday night at home to Windsor and Montreal and then a Friday game away to Windsor.

Saturday’s knocked the Lightning down a peg or two. The previous few games they looked like a team that thought they would win no matter how they played and when you don’t play well for all 48 minutes of a game, it will eventually come back to bite you.

The Power bit hard Saturday.

Richardson doesn’t like to lose but he knows full well no team is going to go through a season without losing. But he doesn’t like to lose like his team lost yesterday . . . coming into a game not ready to play especially a home game.

“It’s only one game. It’s not the end of the world. Last year we lost eight,” Richardson said. “But it’s a wake up call and it’s good for us.”

We’ll see this weekend whether the Lightning have heard the alarm or opted to push the snooze button.